"Despite the obviously irrational cruelty of circumcision,
the profit incentive in American medical practice is
unlikely to allow science or human rights principles to
interrupt the highly lucrative American circumcision
industry. It is now time for European medical associations
loudly to condemn the North American medical
community for participating in and profiting from what is
by any standard a senseless and barbaric sexual mutilation
of innocent children."

The American medical establishment has promoted male
circumcision as a preventative measure for an astonishing array of
pathologies, ranging from masturbatory insanity, moral laxity,
aesthetics and hygiene, to headache, tuberculosis, rheumatism,
hydrocephalus, epilepsy, paralysis, alcoholism, near-sightedness, rectal
prolapse, hernia, gout, clubfoot, urinary tract infections, phimosis,
cancer of the penis, cancer of the cervix, syphillis and
AIDS. [2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7]
But the only rationale which has clear, well
established scientific support is the one originally and openly used by
the medical establishment when medical circumcision was introduced
as a "public health" measure in the Victorian era. That is, to punish
and control the sexuality of male children. Victorian doctors knew
something that modern medicine has chosen to ignore: the foreskin is
at the heart of male sexuality.

A typical western medical circumcision results in the loss of
approximately 1/2 of the total surface area of the penis and between
50 and 80% or more of its erogenous sexual
nerves, [8,
9,
10] including:

The Taylor "ridged band" [sometimes called the "frenar band"],
the primary erogenous zone of the
male body. This unique, highly specialized and exquisitely
sensitive structure is equipped with soft ridges designed by
nature to stimulate the female's inner labia and G-spot during
intercourse.

The frenulum, the highly erogenous V-shaped tethering
structure on the underside of the head of the penis.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 specialized erotogenic nerve endings
of several types, which can feel slight variations in pressure and
stretching, subtle changes in temperature, and fine gradations in
texture.

Thousands of coiled fine-touch receptors called Meissner's
corpuscles, which are also found in the fingertips.

Also lost are:

The foreskin's gliding action, the non-abrasive gliding of the
shaft of the penis within its own sheath, which facilitates
smooth, comfortable and pleasurable intercourse for both
partners.

The "subpreputual wetness" which protects the mucosa of the glans
(and inner foreskin), and which contains immunoglobulin antibodies
and antibacterial and antiviral proteins such as the
pathogen-killing enzyme lysozyme, a potent HIV killer which
is also found in tears and mothers' milk.

Estrogen receptors, the purpose of which is not fully understood.

The foreskin's apocrine glands, which produce pheromones.

The protection and lubrication of the erogenous surface of the
penis, which is designed by nature to be an internal organ like
the vagina. Natural sex involves contact between two internal
organs. [11]

In essence, medical male genital mutilation (MGM) is the
pathologization and treatment of the "disease" of male
sexuality. [12]

"Ken McGrath, senior lecturer of pathology at Auckland
University of Technology...an internationally recognised
researcher on the effects of circumcision...recently
simulated circumcision by anaesthetising his foreskin. He
describes it as a disturbing experience, going from full
sensitivity to almost none."

"I was quite happy (delirious, in fact) with what pleasure I
could experience beginning with foreplay and continuing
as an intact male. After my circumcision, that pleasure
was utterly gone. Let me put it this way: On a scale of 10,
the uncircumcised penis experiences pleasure that is at
least 11 or 12; the circumcised penis is lucky to get to 3..."

"[Like] wearing a condom or wearing a glove ... sight
without color would be a good analogy ... only being able
to see in black and white ... rather than seeing in full color
would be like experiencing an orgasm with a foreskin and
without. There are feelings you'll just never have without
the foreskin."

"The 1999 British Journal of Urology Supplement has a
study of American women who have experienced sex with
both intact and circumcised partners. The results of the
survey are truly astonishing. Among other things, the vast
majority of surveyed women indicated that they
overwhelmingly prefer intercourse with a man with a
natural penis (approximately 90%) and that they were
significantly more likely to achieve a `vagina' orgasm
during `natural' intercourse. More astonishing is the fact
that many women actually rated circumcised intercourse a
negative experience when compared to the natural
intercourse."

"I swore that I would never have sex with an
un-circumcised man. The thought of it made me turn up
my nose. When I first met my partner, we tended to have
sex in the dark. [...] The sex was the best I had ever had.
With the unique `vaginal' orgasms along with the standard
clitoris orgasms. A few months into our relationship, I
realized that he was actually un-circumcised. [...] My point
in short is, sex is incredibly better with an un-circ'ed man.
I never would have thought it, but now, with first hand
experience, I know it is. I never had a `vaginal' orgasm,
until him."

In 1888, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a well respected physician and
founder of the Kellogg cereal company, spoke for mainstream
Victorian medicine when he wrote: "A remedy for masturbation
which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision. The
operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an
anesthetic as the brief pain [sic, see below] attending the operation
will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected
with the idea of punishment." [17]

Whatever the current rationales for circumcision, the procedure
outlined by Kellogg in 1888 is essentially how MGM is practiced
today: without anesthesia, without patient consent, without the
presence of disease or the statistical likelihood of future disease, and
without regard for the human rights of an innocent boy or the man he
will become.

Incidentally, Victorian medicine was equally rapacious in its
claims on female genitalia. The fact that FGM didn't follow MGM in
becoming nearly universal in this country may be largely an accident
of anatomy: the surgical risks are likely higher. Yet American medical
journal articles proclaiming the benefits of clitorectomies persisted
until at least the
1950's, [18,
19,
17,
20]
and clitorectomies of minors were
covered by Blue Cross-Blue Shield until 1977. (Surprisingly, the
continuing western practice of episiotomy during childbirth, in the
face of its iatrogenic "indications" and consequences, is not generally
recognized as a form of
FGM. [21])

In any case, MGM is not without risk either. Even today, partial
or total penile amputation or deformity, sepsis, gangrene and even
coma and death are well established immediate risks of MGM. While
American medicine keeps no systematic record, estimates of US deaths
rates range to over 200 per
year. [22,
23,
24,
25,
26,
27,
28,
29,
30,
31]

Medical Rationales

Setting aside for a moment the human rights implications of forcibly
cutting healthy erogenous flesh from the bodies of screaming infants,
and the older, more obviously bogus rationalizations for it, one would
hope that an examination of medicine's more recent justifications for
MGM will reveal a valid scientific rationale for its continuation.

Incredibly, the opposite is true: decades of pre-emptive
censorship of male sexuality have resulted in a corresponding
censorship of natural male sexual anatomy and function in American
medical schools. Even today, intact foreskins are routinely omitted
from anatomical medical textbooks, or mentioned solely in the
context of
circumcision. [32]
As a result, many American doctors and
nurses are woefully ignorant of the routine care of natural male
genitalia, and frequently perform unnecessary circumcisions as a
direct consequence of their
ignorance. [33,
34,
35,
9,
2]
Perhaps nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in the medical
establishment's approach to urinary tract infections and phimosis.

According to the retrospective study of urinary tract infections
(UTI's) in US military hospitals which is usually quoted in support of
MGM, it requires at least 50 to 100 circumcisions to prevent a single UTI
infection. [36]
But even this figure is likely unreliable because
ignorant US doctors have frequently induced UTIs in intact children
by advising parents to forcibly retract the child's normally-attached
foreskin and scrub
underneath [36]
(the foreskin often remains attached
to the head of the penis for years after birth, with no ill effect if
simply left alone). This excruciatingly painful procedure, which is
done repeatedly as the raw tissues reattach, would be hygienically
comparable to breaking a girl's hymen in order to scrub her vagina:
it's an invitation to infection, and indeed bacterial strains isolated
in American boys and girls with UTIs implies that boy's infections tend to
be iatrogenic. [36]
The study is further confounded by the
fact that MGM was so routine at one time that hospitals frequently
did it "automatically" without recording it on their charts, and sickly
children were more likely to be spared the stress of circumcision, thus
tending to select for apparent or real intactness in the ill group. These
and other systematic flaws bring the reliability of the study into
question. [37,
34]

"The intact baby has a slightly increased chance of
developing a urinary tract infection in infancy but a lower
incidence of UTI (urinary tract infection) the rest of his
life. UTI's in females are found at rates of up to 50 times
that of males (Understanding Urinary Tract Infection,
Infect Urol 8 (4), 111,114-120, 1995) and we do not alter
their genitalia as a preventative measure. Most UTI's in
the intact male are iatrogenic (doctor caused) by
inspecting, probing and even retracting the fused foreskin
and introducing bacteria the foreskin is designed to keep
out."

"Toronto researchers studied almost 60,000 boys. The
study suggests 195 circumcisions would need to be
performed to prevent one hospital admission for urinary
tract infection in the first year of life. Since a conservative
estimate of the number of significant complications of
circumcision is 2-3%, this would mean that circumcising
nearly 200 boys to prevent one urinary tract infection
would result in at least 4 boys suffering a major
complication to prevent one easily treatable urinary tract
infection."

In fact, breastfeeding and physical contact with the mother have
been shown to be far more effective at preventing UTI's than even
proponents of circumcision claim for MGM. If given a chance, nature
elegantly protects infants from infection by immunizing, via breast
milk, against the very organisms which the child's skin, in the
company of his mother, would be colonized
by. [39]
Recent research in Japan, a non-circumcising country, has found a much
lower rate of UTI's among intact children than the earlier American
studies. [40]
Of course, for any other bodily tissue the standard of care for infection
would be antibiotics, not amputation. Thankfully, the fact that UTIs
are far more common in girls is not used to push FGM in this
country. [41,
42,
43]

MGM has also been routinely prescribed for "phimosis," a
condition in which the foreskin of the penis is abnormally
non-retractable. But phimosis in intact boys is greatly exaggerated in
the USA because ignorant doctors confuse it with normal attachment,
and also because they frequently cause an iatrogenic version of it,
again by advising parents to forcibly retract, leading to infections and
scar tissue. In any case, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently
admitted that true, non-iatrogenic phimosis, which occurs in less than
2% of intact males, can be successfully treated in 85-95% of cases by
the simple application of a steroid
cream. [44]
This miraculous medical
breakthrough, coming decades after the introduction of steroid cream,
is illustrative of the cavalier contempt medicine has demonstrated for
male sexual integrity.

Between iatrogenic UTI's and phimosis, many boys who survive the
high-tech birthing industry whole and intact later succumb to the
knife in early childhood, and any future younger brothers are
more likely to be circumcised immediately after birth. Currently
around 80% of all US-born males have been circumcised. [45, 46]

For decades MGM has been endorsed for the prevention of penile
and cervical cancer. But in a letter to the American Academy of
Pediatrics in 1996, physicians at the American Cancer Society wrote:
"As representatives of the American Cancer Society, we would like to
discourage the American Academy of Pediatrics from promoting
routine circumcision as a preventative measure for penile or cervical
cancer. The American Cancer Society does not consider routine
circumcision to be a valid or effective measure to prevent such
cancers. Research suggesting a pattern in the circumcision status of
partners of women with cervical cancer is methodologically flawed,
outdated and has not been taken seriously in the medical community
for decades. [...] Fatalities caused by circumcision accidents may
approximate the mortality rate from penile
cancer." [47,
48]
Another, more recent study widely trumpeted in the media as
proof of an increased cervical cancer risk among partners of intact
men, has been found to suffer from numerous methodological flaws
and exceedingly unstable
statistics. [49,
50]
The primary risk factors for both penile and cervical cancer are
the presence of the human papilloma virus and the use of
tobacco. [48]

On the issue of sexually transmitted diseases (STD's), one
obvious point should be stressed: children are not sexually active,
thus infant MGM cannot reasonably be promoted based on STD
prevention arguments. The child can and should be given the
opportunity to judge the facts for himself when he is old enough to
give informed consent for this very important decision with the full
knowledge of the value of his intact organ. The miniscule rate of adult
circumcision provides strong evidence of what this decision would
be. [51]

With that said, the jury is still out: the body of medical
literature gives no clear indication of whether circumcision protects
against
STDs. [52]
Many studies have reached contradictory or null
conclusions, such as a well controlled study of 1400 American men
published in the April 1997 issue of the Journal of the American
Medical Association which found that "Circumcised men were slightly
more likely to have had both a bacterial and a viral STD in their
lifetime. While these differences are not statistically significant, they
do not lend support to the thesis that circumcision helps prevent the
contraction of STDs. Indeed, for chlamydia, the difference between
circumcised men and uncircumcised men is quite large. While 26 of
1033 circumcised men had contracted chlamydia in their lifetime,
none of the 353 uncircumcised men reported having had
it." [45]

Regarding AIDS in particular, it should be noted that among the
industrialized nations, AIDS is positively correlated with
circumcision. [53,
54]
Indeed, of the industrialized countries, the USA
has by far the highest AIDS rate and the second highest circumcision
rate, the latter second only to
Israel. [54]
This flies in the face of
recent, widely reported but deeply flawed surveys of AIDS and
circumcision in Africa, which did not control for the strong correlation
between the circumcision status and the socioeconomic status of
African men. Muslim men, for instance, tend to be both circumcised
and non-promiscuous. In circumcising tribes, intact men may tend
to be shunned by women, and to frequent prostitutes. In more
secular African cultures, circumcised men tend to have access to the
western model of medical care, and so are less likely to have easily
treatable STDs such as gonorrhea, the presence of which causes
genital lesions which promote the passage of the AIDS
virus. [55]

Remarkably, a strong case has been made that medicine itself
drives most HIV transmission in Africa through the use of dirty
hypodermic needles, which are far more effective in HIV transmission
than sexual intercourse. [56]
Notwithstanding the World Health Organization's
rebuttal, [57]
their admission of a 30% worldwide average rate of dirty needle usage hardly
inspires confidence that iatrogenic HIV infection isn't a major public
health menace in AIDS- and poverty-stricken Africa as well as the rest
of the developing world, where every year an estimated 10 million people
are infected, and 1.8 million die, of lethal diseases transmitted by unsafe
healthcare. [58]
The WHO's apparent success at keeping this long-foreseen iatrogenic
holocaust, and its curiously ineffectual response to it, from "the
front pages of newspapers around the world" is a testament to the
power, prestige and impunity of the holy church of medicine.

Other recent medical research has resorted to comparing the
density of HIV receptors in the foreskin and cervix, concluding that
the higher density of receptors in the foreskin is a rationale for
circumcision. But a similar comparison between the inner labia and
glans penis would probably argue for the practice of FGM. In any
case, a causal link between intact male genitals and HIV transmission
has never been demonstrated, and confounding factors, such as the
pathogen-killing secretions under the foreskin, may well result in a
net loss of biological defenses from MGM, even before the behavioral
and structural anatomical consequences are considered.

For instance, the dried out internal organ which is the end of a
circumcised penis provides less lubrication and so increases abrasion
during intercourse, creating possible infection sites in both partners.
This may account for the nearly 5-fold difference in US vs European
male-to-female HIV transmission
rates. [59]
Abrasion is further
exacerbated by the tightness of the penile skin, which can no longer
slide freely on the shaft. Some circumcisions are cut so tightly that
erection produces tearing in the penile skin, creating further sites for
the passage of pathogens. Condoms are more likey to fall off of a
circumcised penis, and American men are less likely to USE
condoms [53]
(the most effective line of defense against STD's)
probably because of the lack of sensitivity most of them already
endure. Circumcised men are also significantly more likely to engage
in risky sexual behavior such as anal intercourse, possibly in an effort
to compensate for
desensitization. [45,
60]
Furthermore, a small
amount of inner foreskin is usually left on the penis, and it's well
known that mucous membrane is more vulnerable to infection when it is dried
out. [52]
Finally, MGM's adverse impact on sexual satisfaction
for both partners may increase sexual promiscuity.

Finally we reach the deeply embedded
cultural mythology which may be the real driving force behind medical
MGM in the USA, the same irrational fear that drives FGM in Africa:
that intact genitalia are somehow "dirty," that expert human
intervention is needed to remedy unmentionable defects in the design
of the most critical developmental objective of millions of years of
evolution, the reproductive organs. But about 80% of the men in this
world are
intact. [2,
61]
If male foreskin is such a pathologically
disease-ridden piece of anatomical garbage, why aren't men all over
the world lining up at clinics to be cut? The fact is that in terms of
the difficulty of maintenance, an intact penis is somewhere between
the eyes and the mouth, in other words between low and medium
maintenance. If doctors applied the same hygienic standards to the
mouth as they do the penis, they'd cut off our lips and pull all our
teeth. We spend far more time brushing our teeth than the second
that it takes for an intact man to retract and rinse under his foreskin,
and even in the absence of running water, urination (urine is a sterile
liquid, by the way) serves to flush out the region under the foreskin and
keep it clean. A study of 1000 young intact men, published in The Journal
of Urology in 1973, found only 2% had a significant accumulation of
smegma. [62],
Intact male genitals likely require less maintenance than that of
females. But of course the assumption is that men are somehow incapable of
keeping themselves clean. If there's a grain of truth buried in that
social edifice, could it be related to the shame and stigma attached to
male autosexuality, of which medical MGM is only a manifestation?

On the basis of over a century of similarly ambiguous, sloppy,
value-laden and selectively publicized research, the high priests of
American medicine have successfully promoted and defended their
idiosyncratic practice of genital surgery on six generations of normal,
healthy, non-consenting boys, repeatedly indicting, but never
managing to convict the foreskin for one malady after another. HIV is
only the most recent example of this pattern. Even the US taxpayer
has been drafted into the crusade, donating more than $35 million in
medicaid payments per year for involuntary circumcisions, many of
which would likely not have occurred without government
subsidy. [63]
But despite medicine's most strenuous efforts, MGM, the USA's most
common surgical procedure, remains in search of a disease. But in any
case, even the most enthusiastic claims of circumcision proponents
must be weighed against its scientifically demonstrable
drawbacks. [64],
Indeed, routine circumcision can only be defended by ignoring the
crucial erogenous value of the male prepuce, to both men and women.

When all the pseudo-medical diversions are disposed of, one is
left with a number of useful observations regarding medical genital
mutilation:

No one volunteers to be tied down to a table to have parts of
their genitals crushed and cut off without anesthesia. Therefore,
it should be obvious even to those who haven't seen a screaming
baby boy being brutalized in a soundproofed hospital room,
that "routine" infant circumcision would not be so routine if
children could defend themselves from doctors. Unburdened of
the medical and social rationalizations for MGM, and facing the
immediacy of his anguish, the child likely sees circumcision for
what it is: a particularly brutal sexual assault and forcible
amputation.

The only operative "indications" for routine infant circumcision
are the phobias and ignorance of the parents and the
powerlessness of the infant.

The central issue of MGM is obviously human rights, specifically
every human being's right to a natural, complete, fully
functional and ecstatic sexuality, free of forcibly imposed
handicaps. Despite the medical establishment's obsession with
the purported pathologies of male genitals, doctors have no
more right to enforce Victorian sexual mores on struggling,
screaming children now than they did a century ago.

The most virulent, chronic and debilitating pathology associated
with male foreskin appears to be the compulsion to cut it off.
As we'll see below, the medicalization of this compulsion results
in a particularly perverse and destructive form of child abuse.

Mechanics of Brutality

Now let's examine how a typical medical circumcision is performed.
First the child, after 9 months in the fetal position, is tied down
spreadeagled and straight-backed in a circumstraint, a plastic board
molded to the outline of an infant's body, which is equipped with
velcro straps. Next he is covered with a sheet which has a hole
through which his penis is threaded. Then his penis is thoroughly
swabbed with sterilizing solution. Naturally, this frequently provokes
an erection. Some physicians deliberately provoke erections in order
to judge the "cutoff line" and to aid in the surgery itself. In any case,
in the infant's brand new, wide-open, pre-verbal consciousness, this is
his first sexual experience: a torturous
nightmare. [65,
66,
67,
68,
69]

Because the foreskin of an infant is attached to the head of the
penis by the same tissue that bonds a fingernail to a finger, it must be
skinned away before it can be cut off. So the doctor forces a metal
probe between the foreskin and the head and tears apart this flesh
(called synechia) which bonds them together. Next, the doctor has
several options for the actual amputation. One commonly used device
for this step is called a gomco clamp. This essentially functions as a
thumbscrew for the foreskin. I am not making this up. Surgical
scissors are used to cut a slit along the length of the foreskin in order
to insert the metal "bell" which serves as one jaw of the clamp. The
foreskin is pulled over the bell and the other jaw of the clamp is
attached. Then, by tightening a screw, the foreskin, one of the most
densely innervated tissues of the body, is audibly crushed
along two lines (inner and outer foreskin) around its circumference.
(Since all the nerves of the foreskin pass through this crush line,
the pain perception may be similar to that of putting virtually
the entire erogenous surface of the penis in a vise.)
The clamp is left on for a few minutes to promote blood clotting, then
the foreskin is cut off at the crush
line. [70,
71,
72]
Afterwards, the
raw, bleeding, formerly internal organ is wrapped in bandages and a
diaper, and then repeatedly burned with urine and its breakdown
product, ammonia, and exposed to infectious fecal matter while
healing.

For many years the mainstream medical orthodoxy, put forth
after it was no longer acceptable to torture children in the name of
"moral hygiene," was that babies don't feel pain. It wasn't until 1978
that researchers even suggested using anesthetic during circumcision,
and even today, most medical circumcisions are performed without
anesthesia, according to the
AMA. [73]
This is in stark contrast to
what is known about infant pain perception and its profound and
lasting effects on the victim, as well as the plainly obvious reaction of
the infant boy, who forcefully communicates his torment to anyone
who will look and listen. Choking and breathing problems arise due
to the continuous screaming. Surges in adrenaline and cortisol and
large increases in heart rate, all established physiological indicators of
torture, have been
measured. [74]
Some babies appear to go into
shock. [75]
Later, problems with sleep, mother-child bonding and
breastfeeding, and increased sensitivity to stress and pain are all
commonly seen after
MGM. [76,
77,
78]
To all appearances, the infant
is left in a state of post-traumatic stress. Sometimes older boys have
recurring flashbacks of their circumcision, a classic sign of PTS.
Impaired bonding at this critical stage is well correlated with social
dysfunction and even criminality later in
life, [79],
while breast feeding is
known to have many health and psychological benefits for both the
mother and the
baby, [80,
81,
82,
67,
83]
contrary to American medical
doctrine of only a few years ago.

In a definitive study of neonatal pain perception published in the
New England Journal of Medicine in 1987, the authors wrote:
"Numerous lines of evidence suggest that even in the human fetus,
pain pathways as well as cortical and subcortical centers necessary for
pain perception are well developed late in gestation, and the
neurochemical systems now known to be associated with pain
transmission are intact and
functional." [84]
Research for a study on
the efficacy of various types of pain relief during circumcision,
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in
1997, was halted early because researchers began to question the
ethics of subjecting their placebo group to MGM without anesthesia.
Of 11 infants in the placebo group, two experienced prolonged periods
of apnea, and one infant had an episode of projectile vomiting and a
sudden "lack of tone in
limbs". [85]
Other immediate pain-related
complications of infant MGM include heart injury, pneumothorax (a
stress-caused life-threatening condition involving the introduction of
air into the chest cavity), and gastric
rupture. [74]

"I have assisted with about 200 [circumcisions] [...] Babies
scream so hard that they end up with their faces red and
mouths wide open with no sound coming out. I had to
hold their heads to the side because some vomit from the
pain. I always had to get close to their faces and stroke
their cheeks because they would stop breathing. [...]
Consoling is impossible. They shake and their eyes are
wide open with panic. [...] Many of my consults are a
result of trauma from the circs. The babies' state of
homeostasis is so messed up from the stress that they are
no longer able to suck. Every IBCLC (lactation
consultant) that I know will tell you how circumcision is a
major source of feeding problems in the days
following." [86]

Federal law provides more protection from suffering to laboratory
animals than to male infants. Lab researchers must adhere to an
elaborate set of humanitarian guidelines when experimenting on
animals, or risk fines and license forfeiture. Needless suffering is to be
avoided, and anesthesia is an absolute necessity for surgical
procedures, except when the animal is to be promptly
euthanized. [87]
A veterinarian would probably go to jail for circumcising a dog
without cause, with or without anesthesia.

"Performing this extremely painful procedure without
anesthetic has allowed researchers to study the parameters
of extreme pain in experiments that would not have been
allowed on laboratory animals. Using routine,
unanesthetized circumcision as a model of stress, Porter et
al. were able to examine the relation between cry acoustics
and vagal tone in 49 (32 experimental; 17 control) 1 to
2-day-old, full-term normal, healthy newborns during the
preoperative, surgical, and postoperative periods. Vagal
tone was significantly reduced during the severe stress of
circumcision. These reductions were paralleled by
significant increases in the pitch of the infants' cries."

The immediate psychological consequences of MGM are more
readily discernable in older boys than in infants. The older child
perceives the (usually anesthetized) operation as a sexual assault, and
grief, rage, aggression, "castration anxiety," altered sexual
identification, emotional withdrawl, reduction in intelligence test
scores and regression to "more primitive modes of
expression" [91]
are all commonly seen in recently GM'd
boys. [92,
75]

The long term psychological impact of birth-related trauma is
also relevant to the issue of MGM. Recent studies have found striking
connections between birth trauma and adult post traumatic stress and
suicide, [93,
94,
95,
96,
75,
67,
78,
97]
and adult victims of infant
MGM often exhibit a spectrum of symptoms including:

Neurologically speaking, the life-long sexual sensory deprivation
which results from circumcision has a profound effect on the neural
organization of the brain, similar to that found in any amputee:
corresponding neurons associated with states of sexual and emotional
ecstasy die, and adjacent neural regions grow chaotically into the dead
zone. [99]
Furthermore, childhood victims of traumatic abuse tend to
have a variety of brain abnormalities, reflecting a generalized rewiring
of the brain to adapt to a hostile
environment. [100]
The psychological
impact of such brain damage is likely to be far reaching.

"The phenomenon of circumcision [...] serves a practical
function of lowering excitability and distractibility
quotients-sexual arousal-of pubescent males, i.e. biasing
young males toward increased tractability which would
enhance group efforts and less toward individual goals of
amorous exchanges. Neurological data suggest that early
lesions of the prepuce/foreskin tissues would generate a
reorganization/atrophy of the brain circuitry. This
re-organization/atrophy, in turn, is suggested to lower
sexual excitability. [...] Inferential data support the
hypothesis that a practical consequence of circumcision,
complementary to any religious-symbolic function, is to
make a circumcised male less excitable and distractible,
and, hence, more amenable to his group's authority
figures."

Aside from endorsing the sexual lobotomization of children for the
purpose of social control, and their bizarre silence and indifference to
the mass sexualized traumatization and imprinting of infants,
psychiatrists have also helped to perpetuate circumcision by branding
anti-MGM activists as "mentally
ill," [102]
but these orwellian enforcers of "behavioral health" have managed
to overlook two likely and obvious psychological consequences of
MGM:

The early imprinting of excruciating pain on the pleasure
networks of the brain likely encodes for sado-masochistic
behavior in the
adult. [67,
103]

Sexual ecstasy isn't localized to a particular part of the brain,
it's a global state of powerful low frequency waves of neural
firing involving the entire brain. There's every reason to believe
that the sex drive is also a generalized property, or at least not
localized to the neurons that the foreskin maps to. As a result,
MGM neurologically blocks the fulfillment of the sex drive without
affecting the drive itself. This is likely to be a recipe for what
psychiatrists call "obsessive-compulsive disorder."

(Perhaps the Enron of the medical cartel is only looking out for its
own future earnings. Between iatrogenic UTI's, phimosis and HIV being
used to promote MGM, the pathologization and treatment of
childbirth, [104,105]
the hugely profitable "erectile dysfunction" market,
and psychiatry's own penchants for pathologizing junk-fed, sleep
deprived, sedentary kids and treating them with brain-damaging drugs,
and pathologizing, shocking and abusing domestic abuse victims while
working for their
abusers, [106]
the iatrocyclic business model appears to be widespread in American medicine)

Is this the kind of men we need in this world? Amenable to
authority figures? Forever longing for possibly unattainable sexual
fulfillment? Imprinted with a tortured, dissociative, objectified and
utterly disempowered model of their own bodies and sexuality?
Unable to lose themselves in the uniquely healing and
self-transcending joy of the most fundamental communication of
human intimacy?

Clearly, there is something other than medicine going on here.

From the Third International Symposium on Circumcision
University of Maryland, May 22-25, 1994:

"Look at these hands.

These hands have taken a newborn baby from his
mother's safe warm breast and his father's sheltering arms,
and these hands have tied this baby to a cold hard platter
and served him up to the circumciser.

These hands have readied the scalpel, even as they
caressed the brow of the terrified baby as he struggled for
freedom and searched my eyes for compassion he did not
find.

A tortured being has sucked frantically on this finger in
a hopeless effort to end the agony as his flesh -- his
birthright -- is ripped from him and thrown in the garbage.

These hands have removed the diaper painfully adhered
to the feces-covered wound between his chubby legs.

These hands have shielded my ears from his screams.

Nurses of America, I did not become a nurse to hurt
babies, and neither did you.

In 1992, with over 20 other nurses at St. Vincent
Hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I gave notice to my
employers and declared I would no longer be an
accomplice in the atrocity that is infant circumcision.

I have reclaimed my tattered soul and begun the
process of becoming whole again.

I am a conscientious objector in the war against our
infant brothers and sons, and it feels wonderful.

Nurses of America, wipe the blood from your hands
and join me!"

Mary Conant, RN

(Mary Conant is one of the 24 heroic Conscientious
Objectors to Circumcision nurses at St. Vincent's
Hospital, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and co-founder of Nurses
for the Rights of the
Child) [107]

The 1999 report of the American Academy of Pediatrics task
force on circumcision said: "Existing scientific evidence demonstrates
potential medical benefits of newborn male circumcision; however
these data are not sufficient to recommend
[it]." [108]
The word "potential" in this context means "proposed but unproven." But this
is the state of affairs that has existed for decades, ever since medicine
began trying to find a plausible and socially acceptable rationale for
what it has been doing all along.
(Indeed, it seems medicine itself is a confounding factor which
must be controlled for in any study of circumcision.)
Common sense dictates that the
known, certain and major drawbacks of MGM outweigh the unknown,
potential and slight benefits its advocates could conceivably claim given
current knowledge. But at least the AAP has finally joined every
other major medical organization in the world by no longer actively
promoting MGM. Unfortunately, it's doubtful such cautious backpedaling
will do much to counter the pervasive culture of circumcision in
American hospitals, which often necessitates extraordinary measures
to protect the
child. [109]

The AAP goes on to say "to make an informed choice, parents of
all infants should be given unbiased information." But the report
itself is biased in its disregard of the crucial moral, ethical and legal
question of whether parents have the right to irreversibly alter their
child's sexuality in the absence of clear and compelling medical
justification. Doctors are ethically bound to refuse such requests from
parents in any case. Furthermore, the profound ignorance of male
sexuality which pervades both American
medicine [13]
and society at
large (a telling measure of the strictly utilitarian value placed on male
lives in this post-modern Victorian empire) makes a mockery of
informed consent.

Legal Issues

The practice of MGM in this country violates numerous laws and
international treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, [110]
the Convention on the Rights of the
Child [111]
and the UN Convention Against
Torture, [112]
not to mention the prime
dictum of medicine: "first, do no harm." Furthermore, proxy consent
of the parents is likely not legally applicable to an irreversible
procedure which has no known medical
purpose. [113,
114,
24,
115,
116]

The current state of federal law with respect to genital mutilation
is in clear violation of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution,
which guarantees equal protection for both girls AND boys under the
law. [117]
The fact that this unsustainable legal state of affairs has
never been reviewed in a court of law should be of small comfort to
physicians, as more men become aware of what has been taken from
them in the name of medicine, and pursue legal actions against their
mutilators. [118]
The first suit for proxy "consented" infant
circumcision was recently settled for an undisclosed sum.

Conflict of Interest

Aside from its inexplicable hatred of male sexuality and contempt
for children's human rights, the American medical establishment has
a huge conflict of interest with regard to MGM. It has painted
itself into a corner, first by profiting from the brutal enforcement
of Victorian sexual oppression, and later by refusing to abolish
this flagrant violation of human rights for fear of provoking public
suspicion and legal liability. When the facts about the anti-sexual
origins of this practice, and its explicitly targeted injury to
male sexuality become widely known, the legal consequences will be
devastating for the medical establishment. But in the process of
protecting its institutional self interest, medicine has systematically
undermined the basic social unit of society, the family, by cutting
away much of the physiological basis for the emotional bonding that
parents feel for each other. The consequences of this massive
experiment in infant sexual molestation, torture, brain damage,
sensory and ecstacy deprivation and sexual and emotional oppression
can hardly be overestimated. Plausible connections with male
impotence, female "frigidity," divorce, domestic violence, male
criminality, drug addiction, post-traumatic stress and suicide, and
the general state of inter-gender alienation are all promising
topics for future research.

MGM is also a lucrative practice for
medicine, [83]
which charges, first, for the amputation and clinical facilities, and then
profits from the sale of the baby's purloined sexuality to biotechnology and
cosmetics companies. This provides an economic incentive for the
withholding of anesthetic: the MGM aftermarket requires a pristine
product for tissue culture and
research. [119,
120]

In short, parents would be ill-advised to rely solely on medical
advice in reaching a decision on circumcision. Don't expect to be
reading about this impending social explosion in an AMA press
release, there's far too much money involved. As in politics, if you are
not armed with the facts, you will become an instrument of other
people's interests.

Human Rights Context

Human rights is not a zero-sum game. The recognition of the harm of
MGM in no way trivializes FGM. It is clear that most if not all
forms of FGM practiced in the world today
are more brutalizing, invasive and dangerous than the sterile, technologically
sophisticated and surgically simpler practice of western medical
circumcision. But the cultural and power dynamic, the disregard for
the rights of the victim, and the senseless barbarity are the same, as is
the unconscious social objective: the control and forcible diminution of
young people's sexuality. FGM is committed by older women against
younger women, MGM is committed by older men against younger
men. Genital mutilation is an equal opportunity, self-perpetuating,
intergenerational form of sexual
abuse. [121,
122,
123,
124,
125]

Human rights groups which claim to speak for the rights of
children have a responsibility to research this issue carefully, apply the
same principles of self-determination, bodily integrity and freedom
from violence to boys as they have to girls, and add their voices to the
campaign to put an end to this profoundly destructive hidden atrocity.

It is clearly not in the human rights interests of women for men
to be sexually molested, traumatized and handicapped at a pre-verbal
age and on a wholesale basis.

The Challenge

"Persons who have lost body parts must grieve their loss.
The first stage of grief is denial of the loss. Fitzgerald and
Parkes state that `Anything that seriously impairs sensory
or cognitive function is bound to have profound
psychological effects' [...] Circumcision causes the loss of a
body part and all of its functions including a drastic loss
of erogenous sensory function, so denial of loss is not
uncommon in circumcised males. [...] This frequently
results in circumcised fathers adamantly insisting that a
son be circumcised. [...] Goldman states that some
circumcised male medical doctors misuse the medical
literature to support, rationalize, and justify their own
loss; and to defend the practice of circumcision. Denniston
reports that doctors `who have been cut themselves may
be unable to stop cutting
others.'" [78]

The emotional, cultural and economic forces marshaled against
the human rights of male children and their future lovers are
enormous. Clearly, the medical institutions which have led us down
this garden path are unlikely to remedy their own pathologies in the
foreseeable future. The sexual rights of future generations will be won
by a small but rapidly growing movement of human rights activists
who brave ignorance, ridicule, a century of conventional wisdom and
their own instinctive need for denial to respond to a human being's
highest calling:

Social Theory and Biocomplexity
Thoughts on the social and human relational
implications of MGM

Culturally speaking, male genital mutilation does not happen at
random. It is highly correlated with authoritarian, monotheistic,
patrilineal and militaristic cultures, where children, women and
minorities are devalued, class stratification is high, and in some cases
FGM is practiced as
well. [126,
127,
61,
128,
129]
(MGM world-wide is
about 7 times more widespread than -- and appears to be a precursor
for -- FGM) It's not difficult to see how genital mutilation could arise
not only as a consequence, but also function as a reinforcer of such
dystopian and hierarchical cultures.

GM is fundamentally different from other kinds of bodily
modifications such as body piercing or foot binding. It is directed
specifically at a highly emotionally-charged sensory organ, as unique
and irreplaceable as the eyes, as critical to human community and
emotional connectedness as the ability to see and be seen, to speak
and to hear speech, to hold and to be held. It is a mutilation and
truncation of one seventh of the dimensionality of one's perceptual
space (sexual and spiritual perception being sixth and seventh senses,
respectively), and the potential to experience and share love and
ego-transcendent, joyful consciousness and its numerous psychological
benefits. MGM is thus an assault not only on the individual, but on
that individual's future family and friends and, where widely
practiced, on the community's capacity for mutual goodwill, trust, self
organization and local empowerment. A kind of "social fragmentation
grenade." Perhaps this is why MGM was often inflicted on slaves and
other conquered peoples in biblical times.

Men and women who are denied emotional fulfillment in human
relationships must seek it elsewhere, and frequently channel their
energies into the abstracted and manipulable meanings and rewards
of state-sanctioned institutions such as workaholism/consumerism,
(A possible link between pleasure deprivation and workaholism in
monkeys, [130]
may provide a clue to the role of sexual abstinence
as an organizing principle of so many of the world's dominant
cultures and religions) professional sports (a surrogate for
nationalism), statist religions and the ultimate form
of state servitude, soldiering. Interfering with the sexual
compatibility and satisfaction of men and women likely strongly
affects mass social organization. Thus MGM's social utility goes
far beyond mere fertility control, into the realm of generalized
social control.

Social control motivations for MGM are implied and explicit in
authoritative religious texts:

According to [certain Islamic texts], [...] there are 72 wives
for every believer who is admitted to Heaven, and not only
for a martyr. The proof is a hadith which is collected by
at-Tirmidhi in "Sunan" (volume IV, chapters on "The
Features of Heaven as described by the Messenger of
Allah," Chapter 21: "About the Smallest Reward for the
People of Heaven," hadith 2687).

It is also quoted by Ibn Kathir in his Tafsir (Koranic
Commentary) of Surah ar-Rahman (55), ayah (verse) 72:
"It was mentioned by Daraj Ibn Abi Hatim, that Abu
al-Haytham Abdullah Ibn Wahb narrated from Abu Sa'id
al-Khudhri, who heard the Prophet Muhammad (Allah's
blessings and peace be upon him) saying: `The smallest
reward for the people of Heaven is an abode where there
are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a
dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine and ruby, as wide
as the distance from al-Jabiyyah to San'a.' Ibn Kathir
explained in `al-Bidayah wa an-Nihayah' that al-Jabiyyah
is the name of a suburb of Damascus. "That those 72
wives are virgin is proved by the ayah 74 of the same
Surah: "No man or jinn has ever touched them before."

Combining such religious teachings with the sexual frustration
likely experienced by traditionally circumcised and sexually repressed
Muslim men has obvious utility for mass social control and
manipulation.

In Judaism, MGM has been endorsed as a wedge between
married couples, where the socializing influences of "civilization" can
be brought to bear on people's most private and sacred lives:

"[...] Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), better known as the
"Rambam", was a medieval Jewish rabbi, physician and
philosopher. He wrote:

"[...] man should not be hard and rough, but responsive,
obedient, acquiescent, and docile. You know already His
commandment... "Circumcise therefore the foreskin of
your heart, and be no more stiffnecked. Be silent, and
hearken, O Israel. If ye be willing and obedient."

"[...] one of the reasons for it is, in my opinion, the wish to
bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a
weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be
diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as
possible."

"[...] The bodily pain caused to that member is the real
purpose of circumcision. None of the activities necessary
for the preservation of the individual is harmed thereby,
nor is procreation rendered impossible, but violent
concupiscence and lust that goes beyond what is needed
are diminished. The fact that circumcision weakens the
faculty of sexual excitement and sometimes perhaps
diminishes the pleasure is indubitable. For if at birth this
member has been made to bleed and has had its covering
taken away from it, it must indubitably be weakened. The
Sages, may their memory be blessed, have explicitly
stated: It is hard for a woman with whom an
uncircumcised man has had sexual intercourse to separate
from him. In my opinion this is the strongest of the
reasons for
circumcision." [132]

In the sex-obsessed and -repressed USA, we find beautiful, often
scantily-clad models used to market everything from cars to army
careers, to circumcised men. No doubt a central pillar of our own
state religion, corporate capitalism.

These tendencies to social fragmentation and alienation, deference
to authority figures and compulsive economic production and
consumption accrue many benefits to the state, while simultaneously
impoverishing and disrupting community and family structures,
contributing to a social context in which, for instance, authority
figures in white coats, often compulsively reenacting their own
trauma, [103]
routinely bypass the most primordial, protective parental
instincts in order to cut into the genitals of healthy newborn boys, a
remarkable feat of mass indoctrination and social regimentation.

The disruption of social cohesion and solidarity, combined with
sex-driven religious fervor, state-reinforcing workaholism,
MGM-reinforced sexual ignorance, denial, trauma reenactment, sadism
and medical self-interest, help to make MGM a powerful promoter of
its own perpetuation, as well as that of the social context in which
it "lives." It is a node in a complex network of self-perpetuating
causality which comprises a causality loop embedded and entangled
in the social plane. In the chemical plane, analogous structures
are often called metabolic cycles.

In short, MGM is an important component of one of many
spontaneously arising, mutally reinforcing and collectively
"self"-selecting social processes which facilitate the disempowerment,
dissociation, reorganization and integration (i.e. digestion) of the
human community into the body of the state. George Orwell could
not have devised a more cost-effective instrument of social control.
Such is the natural genius of self-organizing complex adaptive
systems, when left to their own devices.

The emerging science of biocomplexity is a recognition of the
universality of self-organizing, life-like processes in the chemical,
multicellular, neural-net, social and economic spheres. Understanding
the profound implications of spontaneous self-organization -- and its
role in human relations, gender-specific oppression, the creation of
social and economic hierarchies and the origins of consciousness and
life itself -- is of vital importance if we are to retrieve the reins of
power from our own accidental creations, and ensure that society
serves human needs, rather than the
reverse. [133,
134,
135]

Epilog

"Society reaps what it sows in the way it nurtures its
children. Stress sculpts the brain to exhibit various
antisocial, though adaptive, behaviors. Whether it comes
in the form of physical, emotional or sexual trama or
through exposure to warfare, famine or pestilence, stress
can set off a ripple of hormonal changes that permanently
wire a child's brain to cope with a malevolent world.
Through this chain of events, violence and abuse pass from
generation to generation as well as from one society to the
next. Our stark conclusion is that we see the need to do
much more to ensure that child abuse does not happen in
the first place, because once these key brain alterations
occur, there may be no going back."

"[...] Building upon the insights from these experimental
animal studies, I conducted cross-cultural studies on 49
primitive cultures distributed throughout the world and
was able to predict with 100% accuracy the peaceful and
violent nature of these 49 primitive cultures from two
predictor variables: a) the degree of physical affectional
bonding in the maternal-infant relationship; and b)
whether premarital adolescent sex was permitted or
punished. There were 29 peaceful and 20 violent cultures
in this study sample. There is no other theory or data
base that I am aware of that can provide such a prediction
of peaceful or violent behaviors and that can relate such
findings to specific sensory processes and brain
mechanisms of the individual.

"It is the neuronal systems of the brain which mediate
pleasure that regulate and control depression, violence and
drug/alcohol abuse and addiction. This control and
regulation is provided through the mechanisms of
reciprocal inhibition. When the neuronal pleasure circuits
of the brain are damaged by SAD-DNS (Somatosensory
Affectional Deprivation/Denervation Supersensitivity)
then they cannot perform their normative role of
regulation and inhibition of those neuronal circuits that
mediate depression and violent behaviors."

Dr. James W. Prescott, presentation to NIH panel on
Anti-Social, Aggressive and Violence-Related
Behaviors and Their Consequences.
Center for Science Policy Studies,
National Institutes of Health,
Bethesda, MD,
9/93 [137]

"[...] These findings overwhelmingly support the thesis that
deprivation of body pleasure throughout life -- but
particularly during the formative periods of infancy,
childhood, and adolescence -- are very closely related to
the amount of warfare and interpersonal violence [in a
given society]."

Dr. James W. Prescott, Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence.
The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists,
November 1975, pp.
10-20. [129,
81]

If you really want to change the world, you have to change men.
Male socialization is the key to the entire unsustainable system of
global ecological destruction, oppression and murder which markets
itself as
civilization. [138]
But you can't change men if you don't
recognize their oppression. Being conditioned by our ancient,
unconsciously self-organized social system as its instruments and
conduits of social/structural power, males are subjected to a different
set of carrots and sticks than females, but they are no more in charge
of their own socialization than women are. Men's oppression is in
some ways more subtle and psychological than women's, and in other
ways more brutalizing, but in any case no less pervasive or destructive
of the capacity for self-determination or self-actualization.

Society's systematic oppression and trivialization of men's rights
and emotional lives is crucial to the alienation and diversion of their
energy and creativity from family and community into prefabricated
establishment-sanctioned masculine roles. Indeed, authoritarian
cultures have a vested interest in the routine brutalization,
pleasure deprivation and emotional circumcision of males for the
purpose of conditioning the next generation's "collectively
autocatalytic" hierarchy of authority figures. (Emotions are
inherently self-referential. They provide our primary self-perception
of our own well being. What is the social/structural purpose of
the systematic suppression of men's awareness of their own well
being?) The colonization and recruitment of men's bodies and minds
begins with MGM.

If you want to change men, help them come to terms with their
own victimization.

Three Experiments for the Reader

The first is a thought experiment. Suppose an adult man was
kidnapped off the street, tied down kicking and screaming to a table
and forcibly sexually mutilated. Would this be a crime? If so, why is
it not a crime when inflicted on an infant boy? At what age do males
graduate from testosterone-tainted meat sculptures to sentient
human beings?

The second is a social experiment. Try discussing this issue with
others. You may find a great resistance, even among human rights
activists of both genders, to the notion that males have rights which
are being violated in this country. Whos (or rather, what) interest
continues to be served by trivializing the human rights of one half of
the population? From the standpoint of biocomplexity, division is the
first step towards reorganization and assimilation. The tiresome
reenactment of the divide-and-conquer strategy will continue until
conscious people transcend it.

The last experiment can only be carried out by a circumcised
man. Run your fingers lightly along the length of your erect penis.
Where does it feel best? Right behind the head? Guess what: that's
all that's left of your foreskin, and it's not even the best part.
Think about it: if sexual ecstasy is nature's inducement to reproduce,
where is the sensible place to put the most erogenous nerves? On
the bottom of the feet? Behind the ears? At the back end of the
penis? No, it would be at the front end of the penis, the part that
would go inside the vagina.

Thankfully, mutilated men can greatly improve their sex lives
via "foreskin restoration", a non-surgical skin-stretching process
which is widely practiced in the USA. See the links below.

Final Note:

The medical and historical literature demonstrating the powerful
impact of child abuse and pleasure deprivation on adult violence is
extensive. In the early 20th century for instance, German parents
were heavily influenced by a purportedly scientific approach to
child-rearing promoted by German medicine. Many of the
"beneficiaries" of these methods, which consisted of systematic child
persecution and pleasure
deprivation, [139]
grew up to join Hitler's
Nazi party and willingly committed unspeakable crimes against
state-designated enemies and medically-designated "inferiors,"
seemingly without a capacity for empathy. Meanwhile, many of their
fellow countrymen who had been spared such medicalized abuse risked
certain death by attempting to rescue the scapegoats of the day.

Today, American medical interventionist and obstructionist
birthing practices have predictably been implicated in long-term
psychological problems in the
child. [140,141,
142,
143,
79]

With the world's three dominant circumcising cultures being led into
a major resource war, the task of mitigating the sociological
consequences of wholesale child abuse and pleasure deprivation is
more urgent than ever. People of good will, who value children as
the sacred miracles that they are, must act to ensure that humanity
survives its own childhood. "Our" children deserve no less.

For More Information

Articles

The Case Against Circumcision
Paul M. Fleiss, MD
Mothering: The Magazine of Natural Family Living
Winter 1997, pp. 36-45.

The Prepuce: Specialized Mucosa of the Penis and its Loss to Circumcision
J.R. Taylor, A.P. Lockwood and A.J. Taylor
British Journal of Urology, Volume 77, 291-295, February 1996.
http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/

An Analysis of the Accuracy of the Presentation of
the Human Penis in Anatomical Source Materials
(Two thirds of depictions of the human penis at five Los Angeles California campus
bookstores and two biomedical libraries were found
to be anatomically incorrect)
Gary L. Harryman
Presented at The Seventh International Symposium on Human Rights
and Modern Society: Advancing Human Dignity and the Legal Right
to Bodily Integrity in the 21st Century
Georgetown University, April 4-7, 2002
Published in Flesh and Blood: Perspectives on the Problem of
Circumcision in Contemporary SocietyG. C. Denniston, F. M. Hodges and M. F. Milos (editors)
Plenum Press; 2003

Male Circumcision: A Legal Affront
Christopher Price, M.A. (Oxon)
A submission in December 1996 to the Law Commission for England and Wales
in response to Consultation Paper Number 139
Consent in the Criminal Law
http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/price-uklc/

The Ashley Montagu Resolution to End
the Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide
Petition To The World Court, the Hague
James W. Prescott, Ph.D.
Adopted by the Fourth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations,
University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, August 9-11, 1996.
montagunocircpetition.org

Excerpts from Presentation by Dr. James Prescott
Panel on NIH Research on Anti-Social, Aggressive
and Violence-Related Behaviors and Their Consequences
Center for Science Policy Studies,
National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, 9/93
Birth Psychology
Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health
http://www.birthpsychology.com/violence/prescott.html

Note: Due to the dynamic nature of the internet, some of the above
referenced links may become invalid over time. I will attempt to
keep them updated, but you should be able to find them archived
(along with much of the rest of the web) at
www.archive.org